Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Thursday April 22, 2010 @08:39AM
from the but-can-you-go-the-other-way dept.

anethema writes "iPhone hacker planetbeing, from the iPhone Dev Team, has successfully ported the Android OS over to the iPhone. He is doing it on a first-generation iPhone, but others may be possible. The port is pretty functional, with data, voice, and many apps working, although it is running a bit sluggish and buggy at the moment. There appears to be much work left."

Karma doesn't seem to affect ANYTHING unless it is negative. My KArma's been "50" (or "Excellent") for years, and it's been a long long time since I was asked to moderate or metamoderate. I think that depends on how frequently you post matters more (which is sad because that inversely affects the quality of discussion if there's a million "me too" responses).

Code things alone now mostly
Left MS heart broken not lookin' for community
Surprised in my eyes when I logged online
The nerd site and I saw the story
My brain stood still so did time and space
Never felt that I could free mobile again
But the feel of the code screamed I need a developer
Mom turned to me that's when she said it
Looked me dead in the face, asked "early birthday? or christmas"
And I
Jizzed in my pants

More likely he's just not caring. You bought the iPhone hardware, put money in his pocket, and relieved his company the expense of having to support the phone should you ever go to the genius bar with the phone like that.

The porn thing is probably just being in a rock and hard place of having stuff like that in the App store yet there being only one app store. If it went in, you'd have all the parenting groups crying foul, and once another app store opens that Apple allows the phone to connect to, they'll

Great, so Apple has made it so parenting groups can dictate what I can do with my tech devices.

There could have easily been many other possible solutions other than making all Apple devices G-rated. Give people a choice, put simple parental controls at the time of purchase, sell a second version without "parental controls" for those of us who don't require an Apple chaperone.

Further, there could have been a very simple solution to the Apple app-

You do realize this is Apple we're talking about here, right? No way will they ever relinquish any control over their software or hardware as you suggest by allowing any competition. And Apple obviously doesn't care if you care that the phone has an "Apple chaperone." If they ever did allow porn, they'd come up with a way to bone you for going with that as well. So essentially, to see some fucking, you'd still get fucked.

Who said anything about cheating?
Sure, it's an obvious joke but it was word for word with matching caps on "CAN" so a link would have been nice but then again, this is Slashot 2.0 and the vocal few aren't so nice.

How often do you see someone link to old slashdot posts when they recycle an old as sin SCO joke? For what it's worth, I think it's a pretty obvious joke with a very basic and short sentence structure. I could reasonably see two separate people making it.

... then it may just be the next step when my contract is up with O2 in a couple of months. I want the free google turn-by-turn app, and if I don't have to buy new hardware to get it, it might just make the difference.

This freaking sucks. A phone that is 2 years old is EOL? Apple is insane with the upgrade profits. Case in point minidisplay port on all new laptops that you can't use your existing ACD with unless you buy a $29 converter. Lets just call that $1.00 of manufacturing costs, and $28 dollars of pure profit, times how many ACD's they havealready sold. Oh yeah, they used to give adaptors away with laptops (these are premium price points, reminder). I estimate apple has made at least 10 million dollarsfrom

I DARE you to get Windows 7 edition special mobile release (or whatever they call it) for a Samsung blackjack 2. Hell I dare you to get a OS update for any phone that is 2 years old. Nokia stopped making updates for phones when they pass the 18 month mark unless there is a major nasty in symbian.

Windows flips the bird to lots of phone makers that use Windows mobile phones. I dont see you frothing at the mouth over them.

Sounds like you have an issue with your handset. I have an HTC Magic in the UK too, I'm on Vodafone (afaik they're the only UK distributor of the Magic anyway?) and have neither found it sluggish nor buggy.

The only qualm I have with it is battery life- it only lasts 2 days, assuming I don't make more than a single phone call or two, but that seems par for the course for smart phones in general nowadays unfortunately. Even the likes of the Nexus One and the iPhone only have similar battery life and you reall

Let me re-iterate to you:APPLE STIFLES INNOVATION AND LIKES TO ABUSE THEIR POWER OVER DEVELOPERS.

Do you seriously think that armed with a NDA-protected, $99/year developer fee, restricting nearly all aspects of development and content and NOT providing alternative app stores will EVER match up to Android?

APPLE STIFLES INNOVATION AND LIKES TO ABUSE THEIR POWER OVER DEVELOPERS.

Since you seem to be this thread's expert on the topic, perhaps you can answer this simple question:

Why do you approve of the significantly stricter controls and higher development that Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony place on their Wii, XBox, and PS developers, but hold Apple to a different standard for their consumer electronics device?

At what point did anyone say they approve of restrictions on other computing systems? Who is holding Apple to a different standard? We all have the same things to say about Nintendo, Sony, and every other company that actively works to restrict the users of their devices.

So uhm, all those people who say the iPhone/iPad is not a computer because things like this are "impossible" -- where are you now?

Lots of things have all sorts of electronics in them... Frequently enough processing power to be called a computer, if you really want to be pedantic about it. I could probably go to the junkyard and rip some chips out of some cars and port Android to that pile of silicon too... But that doesn't really make my car a computer, does it?

Used to be that you'd buy an engine or a motor. It'd be a big ol' freestanding thing. You'd use an assortment of gears and belts to attach it to whatever equipment you wan

Note that the iPhone has more than just a "processor [that] can run arbitrary code" -- it has a CPU, memory, a general user interface, and could, in the absence of deliberate software restrictions on the part of Apple, be used as a small mobile computer (which happens to have the ability to connect to a cell phone network). This is not as extreme as running NetBSD on a toaster, or repurposing a car's microcontrollers for some other task -- the iPhone has all the hardware needed to be used for general consumer-grade computing, albeit in a pocket sized form factor.

Note that the iPhone has more than just a "processor [that] can run arbitrary code" -- it has a CPU, memory, a general user interface, and could, in the absence of deliberate software restrictions on the part of Apple, be used as a small mobile computer (which happens to have the ability to connect to a cell phone network). This is not as extreme as running NetBSD on a toaster, or repurposing a car's microcontrollers for some other task -- the iPhone has all the hardware needed to be used for general consumer-grade computing, albeit in a pocket sized form factor.

I understand all that.

And the same could easily be said of many other smartphones out there.

I honestly do not understand why you would not call a device that has every hardware feature my laptop has a "computer" -- the only difference is the form factor and the advertised use. What if I installed software on your laptop that railroaded you into using it in a specific way, would I have suddenly transformed your laptop into something other than a "computer?"

I honestly do not understand why you would not call a device that has every hardware feature my laptop has a "computer" -- the only difference is the form factor and the advertised use. What if I installed software on your laptop that railroaded you into using it in a specific way, would I have suddenly transformed your laptop into something other than a "computer?"

I guess one of the primary differences for me is the ease of executing arbitrary code.

My laptop has a keyboard that I can use to type in commands/code/whatever. It also has an optical drive that I can use to load software. It has USB ports that I can use to load software off a USB key, or connect another CD-ROM or floppy drive or whatever.

The iPhone has a touchscreen and little else. If I want to load software on it I have to go through their official channels, or jailbreak my phone. If I want to write my own software for it, it requires a second device to do the programming and then upload it to the phone.

Similarly, the PLCs that control the heating and air conditioning in my building are most certainly computers in the technical sense. They're fully functional and can be programmed to do pretty much anything I want them to. But I have to connect external devices to them in order to do that... I have to plug in a laptop with a serial cable if I want to actually do anything to them.

My Cisco routers are also pretty much computers in the technical sense. And they've got USB ports I can use to store/load software. But again I have to connect another machine if I want to do anything with them. Otherwise they just do their job, day in and day out, like any other appliance.

I guess I'm not really debating the functionality of the iPhone. It certainly is a computer in any technical sense of the word. But there are connotations to the word "computer" that just don't match an iPhone.

"But there are connotations to the word "computer" that just don't match an iPhone."

Which are not a result of the iPhone's design, but a result of the proprietary software that the iPhone ships with. All I see here is Apple trying to reshape the way people think about mobile computing, by removing capabilities and taking control of those devices -- and the fact that people think there is something wrong with using the word "computer" to describe the iPhone shows that Apple's tactics are working. I am n

My n900 has a keyboard and a USB port and lets me run arbitrary code. It's also a smartphone! The iPhone is no different: Its keyboard is software and not hardware, but it still runs arbitrary code. It's just the iPhone OS and associated software that refuses to *install* arbitrary code.

We can have flash, java, a camera and broadcast anything we like from fashionable hardware running a real OS.
All we need now is a Downfall video of Hitler learning Android OS has been ported over to the iPhone.

Since it's just another ARM, all you really need is driver support for the "peripheral" bits.

Running Android on this thing should be conceptually little different than running Ubuntu on a mini. The user base is not defined by how many people run Ubuntu on minis, but how many people run Ubuntu on x86 in general.

Running a Revo with an nv9400 is pretty much the same as running a Mac with one.

The CoPilot app for the UK is £27.99 ($43), which is much cheaper than TomTom's app (£60 - $92), but I still need an in-car mount, specifically for keeping the battery topped up and TomTom's one is the best but is a further £90 which is just crazy.

I think I may end up just finding a TomTom satnav separately, which comes with a mount and a touch screen, and a case, and a while set of hardware for less than the iPhone mount on its own. It's fucking stupid!

That's fair; My Touch Diamond 2 fits neatly under the lip of the recessed clock display (top centre of dashboard) [ggpht.com] with a charging cable from the in-car USB socket. I can't play music from the phone at the same time, as CoPilot map data is from the card yet the car requires exclusive access to it as removable media. Still, battery lasts a day running satnav so I don't need it plugged in all of the time.

If you want a car mount, try Brodit ProClip [dsldevelopments.com] - I've not used them, but the folks at xda-developers with the

I like the look of those, although the tell tale mount would have to live on display in the car permanently, so even if I always take my phone with me (which I would) the fact that the holder is on display invites someone to break in and look in the glove box. Even without losing anything that would be annoying!

I think a suction mount would be a better option, with a cloth to wipe off the screen marks!

How does this manifest to the user? I've got a Droid and cant' say I notice any problems that I'd attribute to the OS eating memory. Granted I haven't really gone looking to see what the RAM footprint is, but everything I do runs smooth and stable. Am I missing something?

No, they're just whining because they probably have a G1 with not enough RAM in the first place. Android kills processes when memory is needed, it's not like WinMo where all the apps stay open. I have a Droid and haven't had any memory-related problems either, and I use my phone quite a lot.

I thought we'd got past the "OMG ITS USING RAM!!!111111" whines after that completely wrong and setup article drama about Windows RAM usage where multiple people pointed out that applications using RAM is better than RAM going unused.

Yes you're right that Android phones generally have more RAM, but they also often tend to have faster processors, more pixels on their screen and so forth too, but it doesn't mean it's a requirement of Android, it's just the benefit of the rapid evolution of Android phones vs. the once per year refresh of the iPhone. The iPhone is always behind on hardware apart from right at the start of each refresh, it's just the way Apple tend to do things.

RAM usage is not a bad thing, it's a good thing when used properly, as it is with the JVM and Dalvik- RAM usage is optimised so that RAM isn't just sat there unused and is actually being used for what it's there for.

Can we finally put to bed this ancient idea that RAM usage is inherently bad and that developers should ensure their applications use as little RAM as possible which would in fact make things worse because it'd generally mean more work is being done to keep RAM usage down, such as higher levels of paging from disk or use of compression and so forth?

RAM is cheap now, we can afford plenty of it, and we can afford to use it, the idea that having less RAM and having as much of it as possible sat unused meaning there's more paging from disk and more CPU cycles being used on data compression is ludicrous. It's not like the bad developers argument holds much weight nowadays even, RAM is cheap, it's better to use as much of that as possible than it is to try and shrink your RAM footprint at the expense of more expensive processor cycles.

There are Android devices with only 128MB of RAM that to this day work very well. A great example is the Droid Eris from Verizon. I just upgraded a friends to the leaked 2.1 update and it actually runs smoother than it did on the 1.5 release. Does Google Naz and more just fine with Sense UI running.

It is more profitable to control your customers and railroad them into using only the applications you approve (and turn a profit on). Apple is not in business to bring computers into the world (not anymore), they are in business to increase their profits (it would be "terrible" if they sacrificed a chance to turn even higher profits), and if that means mistreating everyone else, then that is how it will be.

For all of their "think different" ads, Apple is a very traditional vertically-integrated engineering firm... like the old "big iron" unixes: Cray, SGI, SUN, IBM, where they sold the entire platform: hardware, software, custom interfaces, etc.

For all the Microsoft-bashing we do around here, they were really the ones that separated hardware from software on the PC (and then Linux came around and offered the even more of the same).

But now we have vertically integrated smartphones again. And for all the Google vs. Microsoft that we do, Android is pretty much Google's effort at doing to the smartphone what Microsoft did to the PC.

So don't take your freedom of hardware abstraction for granted! But in the end, we pretty much know how this dance should turn out.... just look at what Cray, SGI, SUN, IBM are doing now:-P

Apple will probably always be Apple (at least as long as Steve Jobs is around). Because he doesn't make products for us geeks, but for the rest of the people. He know his market well. And it is not us. So get over it and let the people have their stripped-down straightjacket internet devices.

"For all the Microsoft-bashing we do around here, they were really the ones that separated hardware from software on the PC"

Let's be clear here that Microsoft only did that on the PC. Throughout the 70s, a large amount of software for Unix was decoupled from the machine and the specific Unix running on the machine, and that software was exchanged between various hackers. The only innovation Microsoft introduced, in terms of computing, was to decouple software from hardware and then sell that software.

I really do not want to live in a world where a company like Apple... exerts such a high level of control over the primary communication medium of the general public.

From where I sit, the iPhone is very, very far from being the "primary communication medium of the general public". That title would probably fall to straight voice on non-smart cellphones, if not actual landlines. Most of the people I know have no desire to pay for either the more-expensive phones or the monthly data rates.

Apple will probably always be Apple (at least as long as Steve Jobs is around).

Well, and I think it's fair to say that Apple plays a role. We could argue quite a lot about this, but the way I see it, Apple is able to make some pretty good stuff that works really well because of their strict control and vertical integration. Because of that, Apple gets to be the sort of high-end luxury brand of computers. Microsoft and other companies meanwhile do a good job at commodifying computing. FOSS helps to keep everyone honest by giving cheap and powerful options. In some ways, this arran

For me, personally I like it because it gives me a chance to play around with android on real hardware before making the switch away from apple. There's a lot of us 1st gen users whose contracts are just expiring. Time for us to make the choice on whether to continue supporting apple or not.